"No Bully" Policy at Philadelphia Schools

Philadelphia Schools has a “just say no” policy, when it comes to school bullies and other related negative student behavior.

Approximately, two thirds of all deaths among children and adolescents in the United States are the result of injury-related causes. These include motor vehicle crashes, unintentional injuries, homicide and suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 126 students committed a school-associated homicide or suicide between 1994 and 1999. Of these students, 28 committed suicide, of which eight intentionally injured others immediately before killing themselves. None of these students were involved in gangs.

The suicides, now referred to as “bullycide”, were attributed to school-associated violence, including bullying and other such social stressors. Though the 126 students may seem small for a national statistic, this is only the tip of the iceberg. It does not address the number of students who develop substance abuse and psychological problems due to being bullied and harassed at school — some for many years from elementary through high school by the same individual(s).

“Pediatrics”, Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, reported in its May 5, 2004, issue that the rise of obesity and overweight in school-aged children is associated with “many negative social and psychological ramifications.” Peer aggression is at the top of the list.

To work toward eliminating this rising national problem in their schools, Philadelphia schools developed a policy that prohibits anyone from bullying or seriously threatening any member of the school community during school hours and coming to and from school. This includes:

• Repeated threats;

• Threats of bodily injury;

• Physical or psychological intimidation;

• Extortion of any type;

• Fighting or other acts/threats of violence;

• Repeatedly posting information about another individual without his/her consent on the Internet, bulletin boards, school walls, individual’s personal belongings, or any other location — whether it is during school hours or not; and

• Harassment for any reason, but especially due to race, gender, disability, language or physical characteristic.

Besides school personnel, Philadelphia schools have enlisted the help of the students and their parents. They have set up a Bully Hotline that is staffed 24 hours a day for students or parents to report school-related abuse. The hotline serves over 175 languages through a telephonic interpretation service. Philadelphia schools promise to act on a reported problem within 24 hours of receiving the hotline complaint. For some issues, callers may receive a follow-up telephone call to ensure the situations were satisfactorily resolved.

Philadelphia schools created flyers in nine different languages that describe the school policy against these negative behaviors, the Bully Hotline, and instructions for non-English language individuals to access the hotline. The eight non-English languages are the most frequently encountered in Philadelphia schools and represent over 85 percent of their “English as a Second Language” students.

The flyers were sent to the parents of students enrolled in their schools. Additionally, they asked parents and community groups to further distribute the flyers throughout the city.

Philadelphia schools are truly concerned about the safety and well-being of its students. They believe that all students have a right not to be bullied or harassed. With their “no bully” policy and the hotline, they are well on their way to prevent, address and eliminate intimidation and harassment of any student for any reason.

Character Education in Elementary Schools and Preschool: Give Bullying a Knockout!

Young children love to talk about their injuries. Band-Aids are conversation starters for kids. Luckily elbows and knees can heal pretty quickly but when a child says something mean like, "You're stupid. You're a baby", that hurts another child's feelings. Hurt feelings can take a longer time to mend and continued teasing and taunting can have long lasting consequences. My partner, Danny Jones and I are parents and national "edutainers" who have developed through music, stories and activities (preschool-5th grade) creative tools for parents and teachers to help children learn about age-old character words that relate to a family's real life experiences. To help children monitor their remarks, parents and educators can teach appropriate vocabulary and physical cues to help children label and recognize feelings. There are a lot of good books and songs about feelings. Puppets, masks and even Mr. Potato Head can teach children to match certain facial expressions with certain emotions. When a child is able to recognize the physical signs and then say they're angry, scared or frustrated, undesirable behaviors can fade. Most often in early childhood, hurtful words are said because of the lack of vocabulary to describe a feeling. Young children can be taught tolerance and respect of individual's differences. These young minds are eager to learn that people come in all sizes, shapes and colors. People might express themselves through different languages-perhaps they even speak with their hands or read with their fingers. As children mature, if this message isn't reinforced, they can become cliquish with their own set of priorities. Starting in elementary school, bullying and teasing are hot topics. Most occurrences happen away from adult supervision so that the victim feels powerless. As parents and educators, we need to teach our children the difference between tattling and asking for help. We also need to encourage them to find their voice to stand up for themselves and others when bullying occurs. A fifth grader came to me complaining that the "in girls" were teasing her about her choice of clothes. Just like studying for a test, practicing skills for a sport or rehearsing lines for an audition, we all feel more comfortable when we are prepared. Together we explored through role play, different strategies to handle the hurtful remarks. She chose to deflect the insults with humor. When the girls started to tease her again, she was able to use her preplanned strategy and "punch line". She gave bullying a "knockout". By asking for help and thinking ahead, she was able find her voice. For more information on Caroline and Danny's music, visit www.carolineanddanny.com.

A Brief Look at Attitudes-Based Learning (ABL

The greatest discovery of my generation (about 1900) is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

William James

'Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.'

Attitudes-Based Learning (or ABL, for short) is a program initiated in the year 2000 to inculcate positive attitudes and characters in children and teens in Singapore.

During that period of time, there were many incidents around the world that deserved our utmost attention. The rise of terrorism around the world was televised around the world and the increasing number of children and teens suffering due to drugs, physical and sexual abuse was alarming. The increase in school-related violence and incidents were reported widely, from America to Japan. Not to mention, several incidents involving teens going on a school killing spree in America.

One of the most bizarre incidents involved a seven-year-old boy who pulled out a gun and shot dead a girl in class (in front of his Grade 1 teacher and classmates near Flint, Michigan). Associated Press, Mar 1, 2000

With so much violence and terror in our world involving children (directly or indirectly), there was a pressing need to encourage more character building education in our societies, to bring forth positive attitudes and moral values for our young.

Hence, the development of the program, Attitudes-Based Learning (ABL) was given birth in Singapore to play a positive role in remedying the ills of our society.

In its infancy, ABL was perceived as a credible cornerstone to foster a conscious character building education in Singapore schools. But unfortunately, there was not much done to push the idea forward due to lack of interest and financial backing in year 2000. Though for a brief period, ABL made its print debut in the first Asia's children's creative thinking magazine, ONE, in Singapore and Malaysia through stories that emphasized positive attitudes like kindness, determination and how one can make a difference in people's lives.

It was only until the year 2003 that ABL was resuscitated into its full glory and intentions. With encouragement and involvement of like-minded individuals who were fervent to build a mentally and emotionally stronger Singapore, ABL was re-engineered to serve as a holistic attitudes- transformation education program for all (though emphasis is still on young children and teens).

In the year 2003, the new and improved Attitudes-Based Learning program is not just another character building program. ABL was further dissected and analyzed by a small team of researchers. With added refinements to the teaching philosophy and methodology, ABL program became more adaptive and holistic. This has greatly increased the effectiveness of achieving the mission and the desired outcomes of the ABL program.

It was also realized that ABL should cater for pre-schoolers, as there was insufficient providers of character building education programs for this particular age group in Singapore and Asia. With ABL being a program that infuses the dimension of self-reflection to build better self-esteem and awareness, we were confident that through interesting and thought-provoking activities (based on Harvard's Professor Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences concept), ABL would be immensely successful in encouraging positive attitudes amongst our pre-schoolers.

So, how is ABL unique from other character building education programs available?

?ABL adopts a 7-steps framework, which ensure that each child is correctly exposed, explained and experienced to the right attitude

?ABL emphasis is on self-discovery rather than forced inculcation

?ABL uses 4 easy-to-remember animal characters to help each child relate a specially devised set of values and attitudes.

The process of nurturing positive attitudes in your students using Attitudes-Based Learning program is not complex. They are simple but effective steps to ensure that your students will slowly but steadily transform the way they behave and feel about themselves. More importantly, family and friends will notice the difference in them in the most positive manner if done right.

The 7-Steps of the Attitudes-Based Learning Process developed by Dr. Alvin Chan

There is a sequence of 7-steps that you need to follow in order for ABL to be effective in achieving your desired outcomes.

1.EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING I.Explain the attitude to be taught to your charges

II.Increase their understanding by giving a few examples about the attitude. Better still, tell a story with the related attitude to be taught and discuss with them

III.Ask them whether they have experiences about the attitude taught to check on their understanding.

2.SHARING EXPERIENCES I.Get them to share their experiences about the attitude and the related positive behavior

3. SITUATIONS and REFLECTIONS I.Give them a few situations whereby such attitude can be applied in their lives

II.Ask them what they will do in this variety of situations

III.Get them to reflect upon their actions-are they appropriate or not?

IV.Share your thoughts with them about their actions

V.Tell them what you think is the more appropriate action for each situation

VI.Ask them to reflect on what you have told them-do they agree with you?

4. ROLE-PLAY I.Create an environment for them to role-play the few situations that are being discussed.

II.Ask them to point out whether the 'actors' have acted in an appropriate manner.

5. ACTIVITY (TO REMIND AND REINFORCE THE LEARNING) I.Give them an activity (could be listening to a story, drawing or singing a song) to reinforce what they have learnt about the attitude. This is to help them remember better the attitude learnt in class.

II.Encourage them to 'practice' what they have learnt in class by giving specific situations and appropriate actions they can do in their home, with their family and friends.

6. ACCOUNTABILITY I.Get them to be accountable for practicing what they have learnt by providing them a checklist of positive actions (usually using pictures to show) for them to remind themselves (or even for their parents to sign the checklist)

II.After a few days, ask them whether they have practiced the positive actions based on the checklist that were given in class.

7. EVALUATION I.Teacher must periodically keep track that students continue to practice the positive actions taught to ensure internalization of attitudes.

II.The checklist also acts as a measurement to evaluate the effectiveness of the learning process.

The Surprising Truth About Bullying And Bullies

So much attention is focused on bullying right now. In fact, in our workshops, when we ask participants to identify the top cause of school shootings, bullying is usually named.

There is no doubt that bullying is a huge problem in nearly any setting where children and youth congregate, but you may not be able to stop or moderate the bullying by focusing on that issue alone. Yet, often that is what happens. When youth professionals focus solely or primarily on bullying, it may be a bit like seeing the forest but not the trees. Or, perhaps another analogy-- one that might resonate especially well with mental health workers-- is that a primary focus on bullying is a lot like just focusing on an alcoholic's liquor consumption while neglecting to address any of the factors that caused the excessive drinking in the first place. Here is a completely different way of viewing and addressing bullying, one that you may find far more effective than conventional approaches that focus on the symptom of bullying while often overlooking the factors that cause and sustain it.

MYTH To address bullying, use character education or values clarification approaches.

TRUTH While character education and values clarification approaches can have merit, as a reader of this internet magazine, hopefully you have learned that these methods always fail with about 11-14% of youngsters. Do you remember the information presented in past issues on this topic? If you have been to our workshop, you definitely should know the truth on this topic, because we devote hours to it during class. As any of our workshop past participants should be able to tell you, character ed and values clarification approaches will fail with conduct disordered youth. These youngsters lack a conscience or remorse, so character ed and values clarification methods simply won't work at all since those methods require that the child be able to care and have compassion. Since conduct disorders are the most misbehaved students of all, they are also often the bullies. Now, you know why conventional approaches may have limited success reducing bullying.

MYTH Bullying is the primary cause of school shootings.

TRUTH The media loves simple, black and white explanations, and this very simplistic sound bite is just not a very accurate or thorough explanation. While some school shooters were partially motivated by being bullied, to zero in on just the bullying misses the point-- and misses the point on how to prevent an incident. A more accurate way of viewing these youngsters who shoot, is to note that they tend to be clinically depressed, and that in addition to the bullying that they may endure, they are very sad and extremely frustrated. Better than viewing them as worn down by the bullying, it is far more accurate to view them as worn down by many things. Let me explain why this distinction is so important. This distinction is critical because it doesn't require an act of bullying to set this child off. Like a pressure cooker, this student is building up to blow. Certainly bullying could be the thing that causes the blow up, but it could be any event that lights the fuse. When you train your attention on seriously depressed youth (who may be bullied a lot, irregularly, or not at all) you can more readily and precisely identify the youth who could some day explode.

Further, there may be other populations of youth who are statistically far more likely to cause an extremely violent incident. However, having three types of youngsters at risk of extreme violence is a more complicated concept, and not one that the media will necessarily capture for youth professionals. Ironically, although you won't hear it in the media, the bullied child is probably not the one who is at highest risk of extreme violence. If you want to read the details on who are the three highest risk populations, visit our web site at http://www.youthchg.com/hottopic.html. Access to this article is free, and can make a big difference in your understanding of youth violence.

MYTH When teaching bullying prevention, keep the focus on the bullying.

TRUTH While it is fine to focus directly on the bullying, if you stop there, you may be unhappy with the results. To stick with the analogy used earlier, it is like focusing on the amount of liquor consumed rather than helping the alcoholic to learn about self-medicating. In addition to teaching that bullying is wrong, there needs to be a greater focus on teaching the skills youngsters need to behave differently. Further, you need to modify the skills of not just the bully, but also the victims and peers. Typically, we do not necessarily provide specific skill instruction to all three of those groups. The bully needs training to learn new peer interaction skills, but so do the victims and bystanders. If you focus solely on one or two of those groups, you may not get the results you sought. Remember, teaching skills does not mean re-stating expectations or rules. Teaching skills means that you creatively and effectively show students the exact skills that they need to be different. So, for example, you might teach the bully some new "Opening Lines" to use when initiating peer contact, perhaps aiding the youngster to stop threatening, and instead say something less aggressive.

Here are other key areas that are often not taught as part of bullying prevention programs: personal space and distance, interacting with peers who are different, managing hands and other body parts, and how to avoid peer set-ups. There are many more critical skill areas that often are overlooked and left unaddressed. All unaddressed areas will be an endless source of bullying problems so be sure you cover it all.

MYTH You can't significantly reduce the aggressiveness of youngsters who come out of homes and neighborhoods that are very violent.

TRUTH Just because a child is raised around hitting, screaming and threats, does not condemn that youngster to be that way. Certainly, teaching peaceful behavior is a much more difficult task when a student's dad is threatening and coercing his offspring, but it is not the law that children raised in violence inevitably will be violent. Part of the problem is that youth professionals still use one-size-fits-all methods to work with students. Students are not all the same, and until professionals learn to choose different methods for different types of students, then it may seem that "nothing works" with some out-of-control youngsters. In reality, there are methods that can make a huge difference helping children raised in violence to forgo aggression, but first, youth professionals must start using these more targeted, sophisticated approaches. Often, when "nothing works," you are working with a conduct disordered child, and switching to a different set of tools can make a huge difference. Sadly, only mental health workers are usually taught to take this step, and other youth professionals are often not provided this vital information-- information that can literally change the future for many youngsters.

Character Education

Every parent wants their child to develop positive character traits. One way to supplement your child's character education is to act as a filter for the movies and television shows your child watches, and to review the books your child reads.

The following categories are modeled after "The Book of Virtues for Young People," an excellent book for children in its own right, written by William Bennett. When developing a curriculum of character education for your child, it's helpful to review each children's book, television show, and movie for both positive and negative examples of each of the ten virtues outlined in "The Book of Virtues for Young People." The stronger the message, the more it will contribute to your child's character education.

Following are some ways in which the virtues can manifest as character traits in children's books, movies, and in television shows:

Self-Discipline: A character discusses his feelings of anger rather than impulsively striking out. Or, a character gets his chores done before he goes out to play.

Compassion: A character understands the pain or suffering of a friend, and steps in to help, even when it means she can't attend the party she was looking forward to.

Responsibility: A character admits it was his baseball that broke the window, and offers to pay for a replacement. Or, a character keeps her promise to babysit her younger sister, even though she'd rather go to the movies with her friends.

Friendship: A character stands up for her friend in front of her peers, even though it's not popular. Or, a character befriends the class bully in an effort to get him to change his ways.

Work: A character approaches her job with a positive attitude, and does her very best even when her boss is being unfair. Or, a character makes up a game to get through an unpleasant task, and takes pride in her work even though it goes unnoticed.

Courage: A character is afraid of the raging waters, but takes the risk and dives in to save her family. Or, a character stands up for what he believes in, even though it's unpopular.

Perseverance: A character continues to strive to make the basketball team, even though he's a foot shorter than the other players. Or, a family works together to keep their home, even though the father has lost his job and the mother is ill.

Honesty: A character admits to himself that he isn't trying his hardest. Or, a character talks to an adult about a friend in trouble, even though the friend will get angry at her.

Loyalty: A character sticks with his losing soccer team in the hope of helping them become better, rather than joining a winning soccer team. Or, a character stays at her friend's side during a serious illness or hardship.

Faith: A character reaches out to God to help him in his time of need.

When evaluating character traits and virtues in kids' books, movies, and television shows, also look at negative behavioral influences. Ideally, these influences will be minimal. Consider, for example:

Violence: Does the character hurt himself, another person, or an animal through his words or actions, and does he act without remorse?

Profanity: Does the character use foul language, sexual language, or take God's name in vain?

Nudity: Does the movie, television show, or book show or describe suggestive styles of dress or partially clothed or nude characters?

Sexual Content: Do the characters engage in implied or overt sexual behavior, or do they engage in aberrant sexual behavior?

Drugs, Alcohol, and Tobacco: Do the characters use or abuse legal or illegal substances?

Scary Elements: Are the scenarios depicted gratuitously frightening?

Negative Behaviors: Does the character show disrespect to his parents? Or, does he neglect his homework? Or, does he frighten other children?

By evaluating both the positive character traits and negative behaviors of movies, television shows, and books, and selecting those that reinforce the values and virtues that are important to you, you'll go far in developing your child's character education.

Why Can't Character Ed End Your Classroom Management Nightmares?

Character ed is becoming more and more popular in schools all over the U.S. But in our workshops around the country, more and more educators and counselors are complaining that character ed is not the solution for every youngster. They want to know what is wrong with character ed approaches.

First, let's make sure you know what character ed is. Character ed approaches attempt to use character-building to ensure or engender appropriate behavior. A character ed approach to bullying might require that the bully apologize and make amends to the victim of the bullying, for example. Character ed methods essentially use a single force to elicit satisfactory conduct. The logic is that by building character, conscience and moral values, students' behavior can be improved or maintained at a satisfactory level.

Unfortunately, human beings are not "uniform" creatures. Single-mode interventions of any type can be expected to fail with at least a portion of any group. Character ed is subject to this potential flaw just like any other style of student management. The education world does tend to move from trend to trend, and character ed may be the current one. This article will explain the biggest flaws and serious safety issues you may encounter if you use character ed, and will explain how to supplement character ed approaches to make them more effective with different types of youngsters. We'll also look at how to avoid the predictable safety issues that character ed methods can engender.

WHO DOES CHARACTER ED WORK WELL WITH? Ironically, character ed works best with the students who least need it. So, character ed can most impact youngsters who have a conscience, remorse and values. Obviously, youngsters who fit that description are not likely to be your worst bullies and agitators.

WHO DOES CHARACTER ED WORK WORST WITH? The sentence above may not be grammatically correct, but that is the least of your problems. Character ed works worst with students who lack a conscience, remorse and compassion. A whopping 11-15% of young people will fit this description. The mental health term that might be applied by a counselor to some of these youngsters is "conduct disorder," but the rather grim bottom line is that character ed is utterly ineffective with these students. You can can't successfully use conscience-based approaches with students who lack a conscience. These students will be your worst bullies and agitators yet character ed is virtually powerless to control them. These students are likely to be the source of many of your worst classroom and group management nightmares but character ed is utterly ineffective when used with them-- plus, safety concerns may be generated.

HOW CAN CHARACTER ED CAUSE SAFETY PROBLEMS? Safety problems can easily be created or worsened by using character ed methods with conduct disorders (children without a conscience). Here is an example: A conduct disordered child bullies another youngster. The bully is given classic character ed-style consequences such as being asked to apologize and make amends. Lacking relationship capacity, the child is unable to benefit from these relationship-based approaches, but it gets worse. Having been caught and required to make an apology may have angered or annoyed the bully, putting the victimized student at high risk of retribution.

ARE THERE OTHER SAFETY CONCERNS? Character ed approaches often involve helping the misbehaved child understand the harm he has done to his peer. If you help the bully "understand" how his behavior upset or saddened the victim-- which was his goal in the first place-- aren't you marking the victim for more torment? Bullies love a strong negative reaction from their victims, and character ed methods often highlight the victims' negative reaction. The effect is to place a "kick me more" sign on the back of the victim. Expect the bully's problem behavior towards the victim to increase. There are additional, important safety concerns that we cover in our workshops, books and ebooks (http://www.youthchg.com); we have covered just the most common concern here.

HOW CAN I SUPPLEMENT CHARACTER ED TO AVOID SAFETY PROBLEMS? It's easy to supplement character ed methods and eliminate the safety concerns. The most important step is to be sure all your staff are trained to know about conduct disorders. You must use a different set of interventions with conduct disorders. You can continue to use character ed methods with others if you are satisfied with the results that style of intervention delivers with some students.

HOW ELSE CAN I ENHANCE CHARACTER ED TO WORK BETTER? Character ed won't make up for a lack of skills, a bad attitude, or if students lack the motivation to improve their behavior. Add in those items, and watch the improvement. So, be sure to teach all the skills you want students to use, and cover everything from what to say to where do hands belong and not belong. Any behavior that you expect, you must teach. Without skills, students can not perform better no matter how much you build their character. Similarly, character ed usually doesn't make up for a bad attitude or poor motivation, so be sure to teach both of those. If you are thinking that no one knows how to teach students to have better attitudes and motivation, then you haven't been exposed to my terrific motivation-builders and bad attitude-busters. Great methods do exist. For example, check out a completely free sampler of great bad attitude-busters at http://www.youthchg.com/solvat.html so you can see that these tools do exist.